The once unthinkable is suddenly thinkable. Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr is considering whether the multibillion-dollar collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts should be considered city assets that potentially could be sold to cover about $15 billion in debt. How much is the art at the DIA worth? Nobody knows exactly, but several billion dollars might well be a low estimate. (Read more in the Detroit Free Press.)

AAMD Statement on Detroit Institute of Arts Collection

A museum’s collection is held in public trust for current and future generations. This is a bedrock principle of the Association of Art Museum Directors and of the museum field as a whole. Art collections are vitally important cultural and educational resources that should never be treated as disposable assets to be liquidated, even in times of economic distress. (Read more from the Association of Art Museum Directors.)

Painting via “Power of Thought” May Hold Some Promise

An Austrian-based company called G-Tech Medical Engineering has developed software that allows people to “paint” on a computer through the “power of thought,” reports the Telegraph science correspondent Richard Gray. As Gray notes, the tool—which researchers are hoping to develop to the point that it can be a chip implanted in the brain—can help patients with progressive brain diseases. But there’s an aspect to art making that may be lost in translation. (Read more in the Houston Chronicle.)

Your Thievin’ Art? At Play in the Field of Fair Use

Julie Saul recently opened a show of work by Arne Svenson, an artist with a telephoto lens, a formalist’s eye, and a somewhat unsettling obsession with his neighbors in the glass-walled apartment building across the street. You can meet them, too, in the color pictures in The Neighbors. Assuming that they really are neighbors—and not conjured in the studio or on the computer—the work falls into one of those gray areas of fair use, the legal doctrine that allows artists to use images of or by others under certain circumstances. (Read more in ARTnews.)

Masterworks for One and All

Many museums post their collections online, but the Rijksmuseum has taken the unusual step of offering downloads of high-resolution images at no cost, encouraging the public to copy and transform its artworks into stationery, t-shirts, tattoos, plates, or even toilet paper. The museum, whose collection includes masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Mondrian, and van Gogh, has already made images of 125,000 of its works available through Rijksstudio, an interactive section of its website. The goal is to add 40,000 images a year until the entire collection of one million artworks spanning eight centuries is available. (Read more in the New York Times.)

Thousands of Cave Paintings Have Been Discovered in Mexico

Archaeologists have uncovered nearly five thousand cave paintings at eleven different sites in Mexico, the likely product of early hunter-gatherers. What’s even more remarkable is that the area was previously thought to be uninhabited. The discovery was made in the northeastern region of Burgos in the San Carlos mountain range of Tamaulipas. The archaeologist Martha García Sánchez, who works at the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History, recently presented these findings at the Historic Archaeology meeting held in Mexico’s National History Museum. (Read more from io9 and BBC News).

Help Desk: Death and Taxes (Mostly Taxes)

I have recently been the lucky recipient of an unprecedented amount of small, but not insubstantial, payments. Some are for arts writing and editing, others are one-time grants, art sales, and various art-world-related odd jobs. All earnings have been issued through W-9s and will show up as 1099-MISC income. None of it has been taxed. I understand that I should set aside a portion of these funds for the state and feds, but where do I start? (Read more in Daily Serving.)

Rejection and Its Discontents

The probability that a researcher will have a grant proposal rejected nowadays is about 1. In the current climate, in which grant agencies and foundations are receiving more proposals than ever before even as their budgets stagnate or shrink, the last few remaining decimal places of uncertainty are rapidly disappearing. It is natural to feel disappointed, angry, hurt, and frustrated when a rejection notice arrives, and it’s OK to give in to those feelings—in private, anyway. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

The Detroit Institute of Arts is one of the greatest art museums in the country that represents the finest creative achievements throughout the history of the world. The DIA is not only a great treasure but one of the very few places in Detroit where all people can enjoy, contemplate and study art and its many related concepts. The DIA has developed itself as a public educational institution and has been a leader in the profession at engaging with all segments of the community.

The CAA adheres to the principle that public art museums are held in the public trust and as such are to be protected for the public good. It also supports the Alliance of Museums Code of Ethics and the Association of Art Museum Directors’ Policy on Deaccessioning that states that the sale of art museum collections to support operating expenses is unethical.

We appeal to your higher judgment in assessing the true value of the DIA and its critical role for the public good of the city, state and the country in deliberating on the future of this great collection.

Sincerely yours,
Anne Collins Goodyear
President

Linda Downs
Executive Director

August Update

On August 26, 2013, theExecutive Committee of the CAA Board of Directors has agreed to promote this petition, initiated by Jeffrey Hamburger of Harvard University, regarding the potential sale of the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

This spring, CAA awarded grants to the publishers of six books in art history and visual culture through the Millard Meiss Publication Fund. Thanks to the generous bequest of the late Prof. Millard Meiss, CAA gives these grants twice a year to support the publication of scholarly books in art history and related fields.

The grantees for spring 2013 are:

Claudia Brown, Great Qing: Painting in China, 1644–1911, University of Washington Press

James M. Cordova, The Art of Professing in Bourbon Mexico: Crowned-Nun Portraits and Reform in the Convents, University of Texas Press

Elina Gertsman, Fragments, Ruptures, Imprints, Play: The Shrine Madonna in the Late Middle Ages, Pennsylvania State University Press

Jeanette F. Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe: From the Black Madonna to the Queen of the Americas, University of Texas Press

Books eligible for Meiss grants must already be under contract with a publisher and on a subject in the visual arts or art history. Authors must be current CAA members. Please review the application guidelines for more information. Deadline for fall applications: September 15, 2013.

The Directory of Affiliated Societies, a comprehensive list of all seventy-six groups that have joined CAA as affiliate members, has just been updated. Please visit the directory to view a single webpage that includes the following information for each group: name, date of founding, size of membership, and annual dues; a brief statement on the society’s nature or purpose; and the names of officers and/or contacts for you to get more details about the groups or to join them. In addition, CAA links directly to each affiliated society’s homepage.

The following document, called “Promoting Creativity and Public Access to the Arts,” contains talking points to help American citizens to advocate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

National Endowment for the Arts: Promoting Creativity and Public Access to the Arts

We urge Congress to support a budget of $155 million for the NEA in the fiscal year 2014 (FY 2014) Interior Appropriations bill to preserve citizen access to the cultural, educational, and economic benefits of the arts and to advance creativity and innovation in communities across the United States.

* FY13 reflects a 5 percent cut mandated by sequestration, applied to the CR budget from FY12. The figures above are not adjusted for inflation. (Source: NEA)

Talking Points

The NEA budget has been reduced in previous years to a level that threatens the agency’s ability to make grants in every congressional district.

Due to recent congressional budget cuts, the NEA had to decrease funding to state arts agencies and cut more than 175 direct grants to arts organizations

Restoring the NEA to $155 million will help maintain grant support to arts organizations and partnerships in communities across the country

The NEA contributes to the economic growth and development of communities nationwide.

The arts put people to work. More than 905,000 US businesses are involved in the creation or distribution of the arts, employing 3.35 million people: visual artists, performing artists, managers, marketers, technicians, teachers, designers, carpenters, and a variety of other trades and professions—jobs that pay mortgages and send children to college. Artists are a larger workforce group than the legal profession, medical doctors, or agricultural workers. (Sources: Americans for the Arts, Creative Industries,2012; NEA, Artists in the Workforce, 2008)

The arts are a business magnet. A strong arts sector stimulates business activity, attracting companies that want to offer employees and clients a creative climate and a community with high amenity value. The arts are a successful strategy for revitalizing rural areas and inner cities. Arts organizations purchase goods and services that help local merchants thrive. Arts organizations spend money—more than $61 billion—on salaries, local products, and professional and skilled trade services that boost local economies. (Source: Americans for the Arts, Arts and Economic Prosperity IV (AEPIV) study, 2012). In 2013, the American creative sector will be measured by the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The BEA and NEA will develop an “Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account,” which will identify and calculate the arts and culture sector’s contributions to the gross domestic product (GDP)

The arts help communities prosper in a diversified twenty-first-century economy. Nonprofit arts organizations, along with creative enterprises, contribute to state and local economies, generating employment and tax revenues and providing goods and services demanded by the public. The nonprofit arts industry generates $135.2 billion annually in economic activity, supports 4.13 million full-time equivalent jobs in the arts and related industries, and returns $9.59 billion in federal income taxes. (Source: AEPIV study)

The arts attract tourism revenue. Cultural tourism accounts for 78 percent of US travelers—some 118 million tourists—who include arts and heritage in their trips each year. They stay longer and spend 36 percent more money than other kinds of travelers do, contributing more than $192 billion annually to the US economy. (Source: US Cultural and Heritage Tourism Marketing Council, US Department of Commerce, Cultural and Heritage Traveler Research, 2009)

Federal funding for the arts leverages private funding. The NEA requires at least a one-to-one match of federal funds from all grant recipients—a match far exceeded by most grantees. On average, each NEA grant leverages at least $8 from other state, local, and private sources. Private support cannot match the leveraging role of government cultural funding

Talking Points (Continued)

The NEA improves access to the arts; supports artistic excellence; and fosters lifelong learning in the arts through grants, partnerships, research, and national initiatives.

NEA funds spread across the country and expand arts access. Every US congressional district benefits from an NEA grant, leveraging additional support from a diverse range of private sources to combine funding from government, business, foundation, and individual donors. The NEA awarded more than 2,200 grants in 2012, totaling more than $108 million in appropriated funds. A listing of these grants is online at www.AmericansForTheArts.org/go/NEAgrants

State arts agencies extend the reach of federal arts dollars. Forty percent of all NEA program funds—approximately $46 million in FY 2013—are regranted through state arts agencies. In partnership with the NEA, state arts agencies awarded more than 22,000 grants to organizations, schools, and artists in 5,000 communities across the US (Source: National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, Summary Report: 2011 Funding and Grant Making, 2011)

NEA grants support a rangeof educational projects. Arts education in school and participation in arts lessons are the most significant predictors of arts participation later in life. The NEA funds school- and community-based programs that help children and youth acquire knowledge and skills in the arts. The NEA also supports educational programs for adults, collaborations between state arts agencies and state education agencies, and partnerships between arts institutions and K–12 and college/university educators. (Source: NEA, Arts Education in America: What the Declines Mean for Arts Participation, 2011)

Rural and underserved communities benefit from the Challenge America Fast-Track category, which offers support to small and midsized organizations for projects that extend the reach of the arts to populations whose opportunities to experience the arts are limited by geography, ethnicity, economics, or disability. The Lawton Philharmonic Orchestra in Lawton, Oklahoma, for instance, received funding for an original work paying tribute to Native American themes in a concert that drew 250 Native American guests from the surrounding tribal nations

The NEA has supported military families by partnering with Blue Star Families to present Blue Star Museums, offering free admission to active-duty military and their families, and a similar effort to launch Blue Star Theatres. Other NEA programs for the military have included Operation Homecoming; Great American Voices Military Base Tour; and Shakespeare in American Communities Military Base Tour.

When public arts funding is lost, private dollars do not reliably pick up the slack. Tough economic conditions mean less revenue from public, private, and corporate sources. Loss of support to arts organizations across the country during the recent recession has meant cuts in administrative costs and cuts to programs. Programs for lower‐income populations and at‐risk children are typically hit hard because a larger majority of their funding comes from public sources

Background

America’s arts infrastructure, supported by a combination of government, business, foundation, and individual donors, is critical to the nation’s well-being and economic vitality. In a striking example of federal/state partnership, the NEA distributes 40 percent of its program dollars to state arts agencies, with each state devoting its own appropriated funds to support arts programs throughout the state. This partnership ensures that each state has a stable source of arts funding and policy. These grants, combined with state legislative appropriations and other dollars, are distributed widely to strengthen arts infrastructures and ensure broad access to the arts.

For close to fifty years, the NEA has provided strategic leadership and investment in the arts through its core programs, including those for dance, design, folk and traditional arts, literature, local arts agencies, media arts, multidisciplinary arts, music, theater, visual arts, and other programs. Among the proudest accomplishments of the NEA is the growth of arts activity in areas of the nation that were previously underserved or not served at all, especially in rural and inner-city communities. Americans can now see professional productions and exhibitions of high quality in their own hometowns.

The FY 2013 NEA appropriation reflects a 5 percent cut mandated by sequestration, applied to the continuing resolution budget allocation of $146 million from FY 2012, despite the president requesting an increase to $154.3 million and the Senate Appropriations Committee proposing an equal amount. The administration’s FY 2014 budget proposes $154.466 million for the NEA, which would nearly restore the agency to FY 2011 funding levels and would provide support to a healthy nonprofit arts sector in communities nationwide. Current funding amounts to just 47 cents per capita, as compared to 70 cents per capita in 1992.

Each week CAA Newspublishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.

What’s the Point of Art School?

As changes to the school curriculum and university funding undermine the arts education system, industry experts gathered at Central Saint Martin’s art school to discuss what the future holds for the field. Are you studying creative arts or design? Share an image or video that captures why you love art school. (Read more in the Guardian.)

It’s Time to Rethink and Expand Art History for the Digital Age

Continuing a conversation on Getty Voices about rethinking art history, the art historian Nuria Rodríguez Ortega, a recent participant in the Digital Art History Lab, argues that we must reestablish digital art history on a new ground, both adapting the field to the new web landscape and broadening its scope to include the full spectrum of human attempts to make meaning of art. (Read more in the Getty Iris.)

To Profit or Not? How Art Galleries Make Money in Chicago, and Why Some Choose Not To

More than once I have heard a Chicago art dealer joke that their commercial gallery is really a not-for-profit because, well, their business makes no profit. Despite that appraisal, nonprofit fundraising techniques are finding their way into the business models of some for-profit startups. Traditionally, commercial galleries have been run as shops that sell products with negotiable price tags. Now, some are experimenting with fundraising and sponsorships as strategies for growth. Oppositely, a couple of nonprofit art organizations are incorporating commercial aspects into their practices, such as selling art and organizing an art fair. (Read more in the New City.)

Andy Warhol and His Foundation: The Questions

After Andy Warhol died in 1987, his will directed that a foundation should be set up in his name, funded with proceeds from the sale of some 95,000 pictures, prints, sculptures, drawings, and photographs left in his estate. As well as creating and endowing the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts provides financial support to artists and scholars, galleries, publications, and educational projects. Warhol’s bequest made no provision for the authentication of his artwork. But in 1994 the foundation initiated work on a multivolume catalogue raisonné of Warhol’s art, in part because the project would “contribute to the stabilization of the market for Warhol works over time, thus having a direct benefit to the Foundation’s longterm goal of converting its Warhol works to cash at favorable prices.” (Read more in the New York Review of Books.)

The New Rules of Engagement

Predictably, the recession uncovered fundamental operational and structural weaknesses in American higher education. Few institutions managed to be as nimble as they should have been in responding to the depressed economy. Even fewer presidents had the courage to call on their boards of trustees to think strategically, make bold plans, innovate, and invest. The harsh truth is that the culture into which “change” presidents are placed commonly accepts limited programmatic innovation, except when it emerges from the faculty, and is intolerant of structural innovation. The culprits are not usually the faculty. (Read more in Academe.)

The Neoliberal Assault on Academia

Lost amid the fetishization of information technology and the pathos of the struggle over proper working conditions for adjunct faculty is the deeper crisis of the academic profession occasioned by neoliberalism. This crisis is connected to the economics of higher education but it is not primarily about that. The neoliberal sacking of the universities runs much deeper than tuition fee hikes and budget cuts. (Read more in Al Jazeera.)

Career Services Must Die

Well, not die, exactly. Transform. “The term ‘career services’ has been a phrase that has been used for several decades to describe what colleges have been doing,” says Andy Chan, vice president for personal and career development at Wake Forest University. “It’s not working.” Chan coedited the new report, A Roadmap for Transforming the College-to-Career Experience. (Read more at Inside Higher Ed.)

The Library’s Future Is Not an Open Book

Talk about imposing: the ceremonial stone stair leading to bronze gates and carved doors; the frieze of inspiring names; and the vaulted hall that seems the very definition of hallowed. And the books, bound portals opening to anywhere imaginable, available to all comers. In cities across the United States, the central public library came into being when the country was young and striving to impress. Architecturally grand, the central library was both beacon and monumental tribute to learning and civic pride; a people’s palace with knowledge freely available to all. But, really, when was the last time you spent any time there? (Read more in the Wall Street Journal.)

CAA is pleased to announce the members of the 2013–14 Nominating Committee, which is charged with identifying and interviewing potential candidates for the Board of Directors and selecting the final slate of candidates for the membership’s vote. The committee members, their institutional affiliations, and their positions are:

DeWitt Godfrey, Colgate University, Vice President for Committees and Chair

Dina Bangdel, Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar and Member at Large

Leslie Bellavance, Alfred University and CAA Board Liaison

Kevin Hamilton, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Member at Large

Beauvais Lyons, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Member at Large

The 2012–13 Nominating Committee chose the new members of the committee at its recent business meeting, held during the 2013 Annual Conference in New York in February. The Board of Directors also appointed three liaisons. CAA publishes a call for nominations and self-nominations for Nominating Committee service on the website in late fall of every year and publicizes it in CAA News. Please direct all queries regarding the committee to Vanessa Jalet, CAA executive liaison.

Jacki Apple and Mat Rappaport, the producers of a 2014 ARTspace session, seek your participation for “Designing a Better Future: A Participatory Platform for Exchange,” taking place at the 102nd CAA Annual Conference in Chicago on Saturday, February 15, 10:00 AM–2:00 PM. Deadline for proposals: June 1, 2013; notification of selection: June 20, 2013.

Designing a Better Future: A Participatory Platform for Exchange

Artists and designers operating as thinkers and communicators, visualizers and producers, can be leaders in changing how we think, live, and act in order to make a better world. Are we ready to discuss cultural production and the arts as viable and meaningful practices beyond the established system of commodity trading? What potential models of an effective creative practice can we envision and develop?

Artists, designers, media producers, photographers, filmmakers, architects, writers, theorists, educators, and cultural historians are invited to submit proposals for presentation and discussion that will inspire others to join them in imagining, inventing, and actualizing a more sustainable and enlightened possible future, whether it be local or global.

What would you do to effect change? What would that look like? Do aesthetics matter?

We seek provocative and challenging theoretical concepts and/or models for practical application. Encouraged are visionary, daring, and unconventional ideas and collaborations across fields in the arts, sciences, and humanities that conceive different ways to address social, economic, and environmental realities.

Presentation Format

The format for presentation will be an interactive forum of exchange between speakers and audience. There will be no podium. Speakers will be placed within the audience. Presentations may include visuals such as images, texts, charts, etc.

Each speaker will be given seven minutes to present his or her proposal. The audience will then have equal time—seven minutes—to respond and discuss. Time may be slightly less or more depending on the number of outstanding proposals selected.

Submission Instructions

Please send a description of your topic and the theoretical concepts and/or model that you intend to propose in approximately three hundred words, plus a brief biography or CV of no more than two pages. The written proposal must include a title, name(s) of author(s), address, email, and phone number. Please submit all proposal files as PDF documents to studio@meme01.com. Deadline for proposals: June 1, 2013; notification of selection: June 20, 2013.

Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) invites CAA members to join the 2013 Candlelight Vigil for Global Heritage, marking the tenth anniversary of the looting of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad. This year, SAFE encourages individuals and institutions to light a candle and share their remembrances and thoughts on the current situation, contemplate the future, and take the opportunity to announce their related projects and programs related to preserving our shared cultural heritage. Whether you are an expert or an “ordinary” concerned citizen, SAFE wishes to hear from you.

To observe the vigil, SAFE has launched a three-month global awareness campaign, 10 Years After, from April 10 to July 1, 2013 (also on Facebook). The organization is highlighting the efforts of individuals and institutions dedicated to global-heritage preservation; the global concern of looting and the illicit antiquities trade; how public awareness can contribute to the solution; and the many ways you participated in the Global Candlelight Vigil around the world.

These comments and reflections will be posted on SAFE’s website and disseminated via social media. Furthering the group’s commitment to raising public awareness about the global concern of looting and the illicit antiquities trade, SAFE will gather these reflections in a memorial booklet as a public statement of concern and as a tribute to all those who safeguard the future of our past.

As a nonprofit dedicated to preserving cultural heritage worldwide, SAFE initiated the Global Candlelight Vigil for the Iraq museum in 2007 with Donny George, the museum’s former director, to commemorate the looting of the museum, which became the impetus for the founding of the organization. Individuals and institutions from around the world hosted and attended lectures and candle-lighting ceremonies. A video of these events was compiled to mark the fifth anniversary. In 2011, the vigil was renamed to honor the memory of George, who died that year.

Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.

Cultivating Partnerships in the Digital Humanities

As academics we can be too snug in our institutional silos. We sometimes think of one another as competitors for students, and as a result we duplicate scarce resources in mutually damaging ways. Without more coordinated programs, will we go on teaching the way we have since the Industrial Revolution? Will our students, knowing it doesn’t have to be that way and worried about their future, lose patience with us? The digital humanities provide a context for facing those questions head-on. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

What We’re Not Arguing About

The solutions to the crisis in higher education are still a subject of fierce debate, and I’m happy to see people from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds adding their voices to the conversation. At the same time, I think it’s important to clarify what academics and former academics are and aren’t arguing about. (Read more at Adventures in (Post) Gradland.)

How Long Is the Average Dissertation?

The best part about writing a dissertation is finding clever ways to procrastinate. The motivation for this blog comes from one of the more creative ways I’ve found to keep myself from writing. I’ve posted about data mining in the past, and this post follows up on those ideas using a topic that is relevant to anyone that has ever considered getting, or has successfully completed, their PhD. (Read more at R Is My Friend.)

To Raze or Not? MoMA Rethinks Plan

After impassioned protests from prominent architects, preservationists, and design critics, the Museum of Modern Art said that it would reconsider its decision to demolish its next-door neighbor, the former home of the American Folk Art Museum, to make room for an expansion. In a recent board meeting, the directors were told that a board committee had selected the design firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro to handle the expansion and to help determine whether to keep any of the existing structure. (Read more in the New York Times.)

Help Desk: Ideal Representation

I’ve been meeting with a commercial gallery in my city for some time, and they’ve extended me an offer to come aboard. I’m excited about the idea of professional representation, having a platform to promote myself to a larger audience and further opportunity for sale of work. Some of the work the gallery represents is totally not my style, which is to say, artwork that favors more commercially viable subject matter or style at the cost of exercising any real dynamic or conceptual verve. How much should this influence my decision to join the gallery? (Read more in Daily Serving.)

Thinking about Accreditation in a Rapidly Changing World

Enormous change is under way in higher education, driven by a perfect storm of crisis (around cost, access, quality, and funding), technological innovation and what that innovation makes possible, the growing presence and influence of for-profit providers, abuses (of various kinds), opportunity, and workforce-development needs in a global and technological context. Any one of those challenges might fill an agenda for a commissioners’ retreat or a small conference, but accreditors now wrestle with all of these various forces across a broad landscape of change and urgency. (Read more in Educause Review.)

Counting, Not Curtailing, Adjuncts’ Work

Nowhere does the Law of Unintended Consequences run more rampant than in the field of taxation. That was clearly demonstrated at the Internal Revenue Service’s rule-making hearing on April 23, in the agency’s attempts to craft regulations to impose a steep tax on employers who fail to provide employee health-care coverage required by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. While most of the twenty-five other witnesses at the hearing represented various employers or organizations, I testified in my personal capacity as an interested citizen who happens to be an adjunct faculty member and former IRS lawyer. (Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

How Prevalent Is Money Laundering in the Art World?

Recent federal charges against the New York dealer Helly Nahmad included that he worked “to launder tens of millions of dollars on behalf of the illegal gambling business.” While Nahmad has pleaded not guilty to all the charges in the indictment, the accusation raises the questions of whether (and if so why) art would be used in this way. Art lends itself to money laundering because the market’s lack of transparency means art can become what Judge Fausto Martin De Sanctiscalls an “invisible asset.” Values can be manipulated, and complex ownership schemes, with an emphasis on secrecy, are commonplace. (Read more in the Art Newspaper.)